Wherever You Go, There'll Be Love
by sparklylulz
Summary: It starts as a joke, ("we should take a vacation, go somewhere sunny when this is over"), mostly whispered inside dirty tents and from behind thin blankets. -Harry/Hermione, travel fic. For Sara.


a/n: so my friend Sara asked for Harry/Hermione she could cry with, but since that's always what I give her, I set out to write something that wouldn't make her cry. So, Merry Christmas, Sara, I hope this makes you smile. (also I wanted to write travel fic oops)

the title and quotes come from Noah and the Whale

**wherever ****you ****go****, ****there****'****ll ****be ****love**

i — spain

_(__and __there__'__ll __be __sun__, __sun__, __sun __all __over __our __bodies__)_

It starts as a joke - "_We __should __take __a __vacation__, __go __somewhere __sunny __when __this __is __over__,_" mostly whispered inside dirty tents and from behind thin blankets. Harry's never been anywhere warm, and Hermione doesn't know if there's anywhere on earth that will make her feel warm again.

They don't include Ron in the joke because he just wouldn't understand. He has a family he wouldn't want to leave, and they don't begrudge him that, but it's easier for the two orphans to dream about the world during the quiet night while snow falls unforgivingly around them.

But then the world doesn't end in a debris strewn hallway and suddenly it slams into perspective that they're not even 20 and have saved the world more times than it probably deserved.

Hermione packs a bag two months after the final battle and doesn't even leave a note. She doesn't want to feel the dampness of England under her skin anymore; she doesn't want to have the dead skin cells of an old life constantly buried beneath her fingernails.

Wearing shorts is strange for a change, real muggle clothes and warm sun on her skin as she finds her own little town on the coast of Spain to explore. She's so used to clouds that her first purchase is a pair of cheap sunglasses from a vendor on the street who is so non-magical it makes her heart swell.

Sometimes she forgets that long before Hogwarts and magic and Harry Potter she was just a girl with a massive book collection and bucked teeth.

The beaches are beautiful and she learns to remember how sand feels under her toes and how sea spray can tame even her wild hair. She buys books at a secondhand bookstore that deals mostly in trashy Spanish romance novels and falls in love with men from the 1600s and 2000s and all centuries in between under the sun in a country where no one knows her. She eats more than she has in a year and watches waves wash over her feet at night. But mostly she thinks of Harry.

It's funny to her how a scrawny boy with these amazing green eyes given to him from a mother he never even knew could grow into a man with thin wrists and exposed collarbones barely hidden under layers of homemade sweaters from Mrs. Weasley and still be the strongest person she knows.

She left after his birthday, giving him nothing more than a postcard and hoping that he would understand that she would come back to him, someday.

There's a local boy who lifeguards on the beach and he watches her when he doesn't think she's looking. He's tan and lean, his dark hair is curly and his brown eyes remind her of warmth. He asks her what she's reading every day in broken English and listens while she explains it to him. She's always had a thing for foreign men with accents and dark eyes.

"You stay for long time?" He asks her one night, and for the first time she thinks about how long she's been here.

"Um, I'll probably leave soon." _Tomorrow_. She thinks to herself, but she thinks it'll be easier if he just never sees her again without the bitterness of a goodbye. She hates goodbyes.

"You are very beautiful, pero también usted está muy triste." He says with a small smile, raising a tan hand to cup her cheek.

"I'm working on it." She says back before she gathers her towel and book, turning back to leave one last kiss on his warm cheek.

She apparates in the middle of the night after placing all the books she's collected next in the lifeguard tent on the beach. When she thinks of his brown eyes, she somehow finds herself wishing they were green instead.

ii. — denmark

_(__a__nd __it __was __fun__, __fun__, __fun __when __we __were __laughing__)_

She pushes the shorts to the bottom of her beaded bag and instead pulls out familiar sweaters with "H" knitted into the front, they're baggy but they still smell like Harry. Her nose turns pink when she walks cobbled streets surrounded by languages she can't even hope to follow.

The wind pulls her curls in every direction, and she finds all the best cafes. And she still thinks about Harry.

She people watches from benches in parks as wives pull their husbands along and children cry for candy and she wonders how England feels. It's almost Christmas - lights are strewn in the trees all over her head and there's a tree in every window she passes.

The flat she rents barely has any heat but plenty of blankets and she uses jars with little blue flames inside of them to stay warm. Her old Hogwarts scarf is frayed around the edges but she still winds it around her neck each morning.

Gradually the tan that covered her body fades and freckles stand out against the pale curves of her nose and shoulders. She feels like Persephone - forever torn between the love of summer with bright flowers and the cruel sting of winter where nothing seems like it can ever grow again.

"Don't you get sick of coming here?" One of the baristas, (_Jenni__, _Hermione thinks, _her __name __is __Jenni __and __she__'__s __from __America_), at a local coffee shop asks her one morning.

"Why would I?" Hermione asks back, pulling a few coins from her pocket.

"You just don't really ever look happy, I guess," the taller girl of the two shrugs from the behind the bar and busies herself with making Hermione's typical Earl Grey.

She hands over the warm cup with a sympathetic expression, but as soon as Hermione turns from the counter she drops it.

Sitting next to the window in her familiar spot is an even familiar boy with wind tossed raven hair and soft pink staining his cheeks from the cold. Harry Potter sits in the corner of the cafe like he couldn't look better anywhere but right there.

He looks up at her over the edge of a paper and she looks down at her feet and the mess she's made and laughter bubbles up through her throat and over her lips. Her whole body shakes with the best feeling pain of a funny moment that really isn't funny at all but laughing is still a better alternative than crying. He's laughing too, more muted, pulling napkins from the table and bends next to her tea soaked feet.

There are tears in her eyes when he straightens up, his glasses lopsided and a sopping mess in his hands.

"You owe me another tea," She says softly, and he winks back at her.

"I missed you, too." He says back, because Harry just always knows what she really means to say.

They sit in silence for a little, staring out the window at a cold town in a country they don't know but she feels warm despite her freezing fingers and toes. Her hair is pulled into a tangled bun but Harry stares at her like he's never seen anything more worth looking at in his life.

"You always said you wanted to come here so I came and waited for you to show up," He sips at his tea and she wonders how long he's waited here in this little corner of the world.

"What if I never showed up?" She asks.

"I guess I would've waited forever." It's so simple. Like she's worth waiting forever on, like she hasn't abandoned him, like she isn't the most selfish person on the planet.

"I can't come home. Not yet," Is all she can give him back.

He shakes his head and lets out a forced laugh, "For the brightest witch of your age, you can be pretty thick sometimes." He reaches a warm hand across to her cheek, "Don't you get it? My home is wherever you are, Hermione, and it's always been that way. I've always followed you wherever you wanted to go, and I always will."

She thinks of Hogsmead in the winter, a scared boy under an invisibility cloak; she thinks of a snowy forest, a scared man under a shared blanket listening to her read.

"Let's go to Paris," She says in return and he just nods.

They're gone by nightfall, his warm hand still wrapped in hers as she concentrates on getting them to the right place.

iii. — france

_(__and __it__'__ll __be __love__, __love__, __love __all __through __our __bodies__)_

They settle for the first time in Paris. It's a pretty crummy flat but it has a balcony that overlooks a tiny garden, the first roots of spring taking hold of the tiny flowers.

Instead of doing nothing with their time, Harry buys a muggle camera and moonlights as a photographer and Hermione starts writing their story down. She doesn't let anyone read it, not even Harry, but she buys a set of watercolors from a man down the street and she falls in love with colors in the trees and the people on the street. But most of all Harry.

He poses for her sometimes when he isn't too tired, his pale scar barely poking out from the long shaggy locks falling into his eyes. French food has been kind to him, his gaunt cheeks of a year before are now fuller and for the first time when he bends over a small stomach pokes over the waistband of his jeans.

Long limbs are tangled under a knitted blanket she'd brought from her house back in England, and her hands stroke the canvas with ease. She has his face memorized by now, but she doesn't tell him that. Every once in awhile he'll pull out his camera and point it at her, he must have hundreds of pictures by now but he doesn't stop taking them.

"We have to go back eventually," She sighs against him on their cramped sofa, surrounded by paint brushes and drying photographs.

"Why?" He asks, looking over the top of his glasses at her.

"We have people who love us, people we left behind. I never meant to stay gone this long. I was always going to come back to you," She smiles, raising one of his scarred hands to her lips and kissing each finger tenderly.

He wraps his free arm around her, "And here I sit, with you. Just because we live here doesn't mean we can't ever visit. I like it here. I have good memories here."

She remembers the Burrow and how the first time she stepped foot in Ron's house she thought she could never find anywhere that felt more like a home should, but now she looks around at Harry's discarded socks and their mismatched tea cups from that morning. She takes in the small muggle television they purchased together and the smell of cinnamon in the air.

"I'm happy as long as you're with me," She leans up to touch her lips to his gently.

"I love you, too, Hermione."


End file.
